ARABÂ CONTEMPORARY is the second chapter in the series âArchitecture, Culture and Identityâ at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark. The exhibition takes the visitor to old Yemenite civilizations and new cities like Dubai and new architectural projects that relate to the desert as place. It shows SMAQ’s proposal Ex-Palm for the transformation of Palm Jumeirah in Dubai towards a sustainable city quarter as printed model with a diametre of two metres together with SMAQ’s manifesto for a critical urban transformation “Charter of Dubai” in large format (50 cm x 66 cm) leather bound as well as how other architectural offices such as Jean Nouvel, Henning Larsen Architects and X-Architects, intervene in the region with new interpretations.

The seriesÂ âArchitecture, Culture and Identityâ is about how architecture is both a bearer of identity and promotes the shaping of the cultural distinctiveness of a country or a region. The exhibition CONTEMPORARY ARAB attempts to home in on features shared by the Arab countries â from the Arabian Peninsula through Lebanon to Morocco. The Arab world is first and foremost connected by language, but there are other common features that point both to a shared understanding of space and a visual culture where one can draw lines from calligraphy over certain construction elements to architecture on the very grand scale. CONTEMPORARY ARAB traces some of these common lines for consideration, and a picture of the notion of âthe Arabianâ will arise through various stories from places where significant developments are happening right now. A current focus is the relationship between private and public space, which is presently changing socially, politically and architecturally.

The exhibtion was curated by Mette Marie Kallehauge and Kjeld Kjeldsen.